Conversation
06.03.16
Should I Stay or Should I Go?
It’s graduation time, and Chinese graduates from American colleges are now pondering what to do next: return to China or stay in the U.S. We reached out to recent graduates to ask about their decision-making process and how they view their prospects...
ChinaFile Recommends
05.17.16Will China's Educational System Strangle Economic Growth?
Forbes
Despite the brain drain, China still managed to produce enough talents to make it the fastest growing nation in the past two decades.
ChinaFile Recommends
04.12.16China Wants to Become a ‘Soccer Superpower’ by 2050
Time
It isn't just about sport. The strategy also has broad economic and political implications.
Caixin Media
04.01.16
China’s Rural Youngsters Drop Out of School at Alarming Rate
Like many other teenagers in his village in the mountains of the northwestern province of Shaanxi, Chen Youliang decided to quit school early so he could follow in the footsteps of his migrant worker parents and find a job in a big city.Chen, who...
Media
03.29.16
‘River Town’ the Movie
from China Film Insider
Not since Iron and Silk premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1991 has a movie based on a memoir about teachers on the front lines of U.S.-China relations come to the big screen. Director Shirley Sun’s mostly-English-language film adaptation of...
ChinaFile Recommends
03.08.16China Focus: Campaigners Call For Education on Sexual Abuse
Xinhua
Lessons on how to avoid sexual abuse are absent from the national curriculum, and Sun wants to change this.
Media
02.11.16
Chinese Students Are Flooding U.S. Christian High Schools
It is no secret that Chinese students are pouring into the United States; over 300,000 of them attended U.S. colleges and universities in 2015 alone, and Chinese are filling up spots in U.S. secondary schools in search of a better education and an...
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01.12.16Manchu, Former Empire's Language, Hangs On at China's Edge
New York Times
Descendants of the settlers struggle to keep a nearly vanished tongue alive
ChinaFile Recommends
11.24.15Chinese Student Protesting Books’ Stance on Homosexuality Meets With Officials
New York Times
Gay activists in China brought their demands for public acceptance to a court.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.19.15China’s College Counselors Told to Join the Party — the Communist Party
Time
China’s Education Ministry has deemed universities an “ideological frontline”.
Media
11.18.15
Chinese Students in America: 300,000 and Counting
In 1981, when Erhfei Liu entered Brandeis University as an undergraduate, he was only the second student from mainland China in the school’s history. “I was a rare animal from Red China,” Liu said in a September 1 interview with Foreign Policy, “an...
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11.03.15How China Wants to Rate Its Citizens
New Yorker
In certain respects, a national credit system of some kind is long overdue in China.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.03.15China Is Losing Interest in Learning English
CNBC
China is losing interest in learning English, sending its proficiency in the global language of business falling ten places in a worldwide ranking.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.29.15Teaching the Common Core in China
New York Times
It was to be my first parents meeting at Zhoushan’s most elite high school.
Media
10.23.15
The Eagle, the Dragon, and the ‘Excellent Sheep’
Former Yale University English professor William Deresiewicz’s book, Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life, created a firestorm in the United States when it was released in August 2014. “The...
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10.23.15Chinese Schools 'Robbing Young of Individuality'
BBC
China's education system is robbing its young people of the chance to become unique individuals.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.21.15China Turns to Online Courses, and Mao, for Soft-Power Mission
New York Times
“It was like watching propaganda.”
ChinaFile Recommends
09.21.15Respect Your Elders: Confucian Kindergartens Catch On in China
WSJ: China Real Time Report
The Party is now introducing traditional culture classes in state-run kindergartens and other levels of schooling.
Sinica Podcast
09.10.15
China’s Millennials
from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn record from San Francisco, where they interview Eric Fish, a long-time China resident, writer at Asia Society, and author of the recent book China’s Millennials: The Want Generation. The hosts talk...
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07.08.15China’s Confucius Institutes and the Soft War
Diplomat
The first Confucius Institute opened its door in November 2004 in Seoul, South Korea. Hanban, or the Chinese National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language.
Media
06.26.15
A Chinese Feminist, Made in America
In August 2010, two weeks after turning 18, I traveled about 6,700 miles from Beijing, China to attend Amherst, a liberal-arts college in Massachusetts in the northeastern United States. I packed a copy of Harvard economist N. Gregory Mankiw’s...
Caixin Media
06.09.15
China’s Cabinet Unveils Plan to Improve Rural Schools
The State Council has released a plan for improving the quality of education in rural areas over the next five years—a move the cabinet says is aimed at improving the quality of teaching at primary and secondary schools in the country’s less-...
Media
06.02.15
Chinese Netizens to Fiorina: You’re Right, We Don’t Innovate
Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and a declared Republican candidate for U.S. president, evidently has strong opinions about the capacities of Chinese people. “Yeah, the Chinese can take a test,” Fiorina told an Iowa-based video blog...
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03.31.15Why Chinese Students Find it Hard to Make Friends on US Campuses
Hong Kong Economic Journal
Chinese students complain that American students are misinformed, prejudiced and offensive on Chinese current events.
ChinaFile Recommends
03.10.15Henan Delegates Protest Inequality in University Admissions
New York Times
Henan people say big cities are given preferential consideration for education funds and places in universities.
The China Africa Project
02.18.15
Chinese Studies at the University of Botswana
It’s long been said that while China may have an Africa policy, Africans do not have a China policy. In particular, too many Africans do not understand the language, culture, and politics of their new number one trading partner. The University of...
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02.09.15China Tells Schools to Suppress Western Ideas, With One Big Exception
New York Times
Some teachers and students reject the idea that foreign pedagogy and textbooks pose a threat to the government.
ChinaFile Recommends
01.05.15Inside a Chinese Test-Prep Factory
New York Times
One minute later, at precisely 11:45, the stillness was shattered. Thousands of teenagers swarmed out of the towering front gate of Maotanchang High School. Many of them wore identical black-and-white Windbreakers emblazoned with the slogan, in...
Infographics
12.15.14
Is Studying Abroad Worth the Cost?
from Sohu
The number of Chinese students who choose to study abroad has increased by more than 1,000% since 2000. Yet education costs abroad also continue to rise. This infographic looks at reasons why Chinese students are choosing an education overseas.
ChinaFile Recommends
12.01.14Teachers’ Strikes Spread Across Northeast China
New York Times
Teachers are asking for raises and for the government to end a requirement that teachers make payments to a pension plan as part of an experimental policy. China National Radio reported that one teacher was making less than $400 a month after...
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11.24.14China’s Rich Want to Send Children Abroad for Education
China Daily
The report said that some 80 percent of the country's rich people have plans to send children abroad, the highest ratio in the world. By contrast, Japan has less than 1 percent and Germany has less than 10 percent of its rich people having such...
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11.03.14Is China’s Grand Ethnic Experiment Working?
BBC
In a gleaming classroom at Chong Hua High School in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, students peer at onion slices under microscopes. Their biology teacher calls on Abdurrahman Mamat to explain what he sees."Plasmolysis," he replies...
Media
10.21.14
Chinese Doubt Their Own Soft Power Venture
On September 27, Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong read aloud a letter written by President Xi Jinping at a ceremony in Beijing celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Confucius Institute (CI) program, an international chain of academic centers...
Sinica Podcast
10.17.14
China Daddy Issues
from Sinica Podcast
We’ve all heard about the difficulty of finding good schools in China, and know first hand about the food and air safety problems. But what about the terrors of pedestrian crossings, the dilemmas of how much trust you should inculcate in your kids,...
ChinaFile Recommends
09.15.14Q. and A.: Yong Zhao on Education and Authoritarianism in China
New York Times
Yong Zhao, a professor of education at the University of Oregon, is the author of "Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon: Why China Has the Best (and Worst) Education System in the World.”
Sinica Podcast
07.18.14
Debating Societies in China
from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, we’re happy to welcome back Jeremy Goldkorn in conversation with David Weeks, founder and President of the National High School Debate League of China, a debating society currently established in twenty-seven cities throughout...
Infographics
07.16.14
Learn English, Chinese Style
from Sohu
In 2009, the number of people studying English in China was roughly equal to the population of the U.S. In 2012, Chinese people spent a total of $4.8 billion on English lessons. China is the world’s biggest market for English-as-a-foreign-language...
Sinica Podcast
07.14.14
Education in China
from Sinica Podcast
This week on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo and David Moser are joined by Jiang Xueqin, deputy principal of Tsinghua Fuzhong Affiliated High School and author of Creative China, for a discussion of the education system in China. Specifically, we’re curious to...
Conversation
06.23.14
The Debate Over Confucius Institutes
Last week, the American Association of University Professors joined a growing chorus of voices calling on North American universities to rethink their relationship with Confucius Institutes, the state-sponsored Chinese-language programs...
Sinica Podcast
06.02.14
OMG, in Conversation With Jessica Beinecke
from Sinica Podcast
Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn interview Jessica Beinecke, host of the VOA-funded OMG Meiyu, a Chinese show on English slang that has earned Jessica hundreds of thousands of followers in China. Now the owner of her own production company, Jessica is...
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05.26.14China's Beachhead in U.S. Schools
Wall Street Journal
The Confucius education network shows the promise and peril of doing academic business with Beijing.
ChinaFile Recommends
05.23.14A Scholarly Response to ‘Tiger Mom’: Happiness Matters, Too
New York Times
When a child scores 99 on a test, an American parent will lavish praise. But a Chinese parent will say: “What happened? Why didn’t you get 100?”
The NYRB China Archive
04.08.14
Solving China’s Schools: An Interview with Jiang Xueqin
from New York Review of Books
In December, China stunned the world when the most widely used international education assessment revealed that Shanghai’s schools now outperform those of any other country—not only in math and science but also in reading. Some education experts...
ChinaFile Recommends
01.29.14Features
01.26.14
For Freedom, Justice, and Love
from China Change
Following is legal activist Xu Zhiyong’s closing statement at the end of his trial in Beijing on January 22, 2014. According to his lawyer, Xu was only able to read “about ten minutes of it before the presiding judge stopped him, saying it was...
ChinaFile Recommends
12.12.13U.S. Colleges Finding Ideals Tested Abroad
New York Times
Like U.S. corporations, American colleges are extending their brands overseas. But colleges claim to place ideals over income. As professors abroad face consequences for what they say, most universities are doing little more than wringing their...
Conversation
11.19.13
What Will the Beginning of the End of the One-Child Policy Bring?
Leta Hong Fincher:The Communist Party’s announcement that it will loosen the one-child policy is, of course, welcome news. Married couples will be allowed to have two children if only one of the spouses is an only child, meaning that millions more...
Viewpoint
09.03.13
China’s Higher Education Bubble
The number of university graduates in China has exploded.In 1997, 400,000 students graduated from four-year university programs. Today, Chinese schools produce more than 3 million per year. But employment rates at graduation have plunged. And remote...
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08.21.13Why Aren’t Chinese People Reading Books Anymore?
Atlantic
China’s once-robust trade in serious literature has withered under an increasingly materialistic, results-oriented society.
Features
07.23.13
Discrimination in China’s Schools
In a new report titled As Long As They Let Us Stay in Class: Barriers to Education for Persons with Disabilities in China, the New York-based non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) outlines systemic discrimination...
Reports
07.15.13
‘As Long as They Let Us Stay in Class’
Human Rights Watch
According to official statistics, over 40 percent of people with disabilities are illiterate and 15 million live on less than one dollar a day in the countryside. The Chinese government has an impressive record in providing primary education for...
Media
07.02.13
American History, Through Chinese Eyes
White male privilege, genocide against Native Americans, slavery and subsequent racial oppression, exploitation of immigrants and laborers, repression of women and homosexuals, and environmental destruction—teaching American cultural history through...
Media
06.17.13
Do Quotas in China’s College Admissions System Reinforce Existing Inequalities?
Earlier this month, millions of Chinese students took the exam for which they had been preparing their entire lives—the National Higher Education Entrance Examination, known colloquially as the gaokao. For some, the process was more arduous than for...
Media
05.28.13
Trending on Weibo: #AIDSPatientsCanBeTeachers#
In the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, carriers of the AIDS virus are now allowed to teach schoolchildren. The recently-announced change in regulations marks a step forward for AIDS activists, with the hashtag #AIDSPatientsCanBeTeachers# now...
ChinaFile Recommends
05.02.13Learning From China, But What?
New York Times
Yu Hua on how the new Schwarzmen scholarship ought to look to Apple’s and Google’s experience in China as instructive examples of how to (and how not to) do business in China.
ChinaFile Recommends
02.18.13Return to Rivertown
National Geographic
In 1996 a Peace Corps volunteer arrived in Fuling, a sleepy town on the Yangtze, to teach English. He went back recently to find the landscape—and his former students—transformed.
ChinaFile Recommends
01.14.13International Schools in China Point Students to the West
Reuters
Some Chinese pay as much as 260,000 renminbi, or about $42,000, a year for a Western-style education and a possible ticket to a college overseas for their children.
Features
12.18.12
College Graduates Compete for Jobs Sweeping Streets
from Tablet
Tong Peng spent six months discovering his bachelor’s degree was “worthless” before deciding to apply for a job as a street sweeper.He graduated from college in Harbin in June, 2012, not expecting to find it so tough to find work with a college...
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12.09.12The Struggle of 15-Year-Old Hukou Protester Zhan Haite
ChinaGeeks
A 15-year-old girl has made waves in the Chinese press recently for her fight against Shanghai authorities after she was banned from taking the college entrance examination because she does not hold a Shanghaihukou(household registration). She and...
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10.18.12Li Lei and Han Meimei, The love affair of a whole generation
Offbeat China
Two characters in China’s English textbook used 20 years ago are back, sparking a wave of nostalgia.